


Scaling Fences

by dotfic



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-25
Updated: 2010-07-25
Packaged: 2017-10-12 20:26:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/128715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dotfic/pseuds/dotfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four times Dean had to teach Sam how to get over a fence, and one time he didn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scaling Fences

**Author's Note:**

> a/n: Written for deirdre_c's birthday. This is...not the prompt you gave me (surprise!) but the concept popped into my head and I immediately thought of you. <3 Thank you to marinarusalka for the beta.

Sam and Dean had to cut through a few backyards to get to the swimming hole. Or so Dean explained, towel draped around his neck, nose peeling with sunburn and his feet jammed into sneakers without any socks. He wore a pair of khaki shorts with a hole in the thigh and a Zeppelin t-shirt.

Sam grabbed another towel and followed Dean down the stairs, then out into the summer heat, where the trees were full of the buzz of insects. Dad had rented the tiny, top-floor apartment of a big, shabby house at the edge of a neighborhood full of large, old houses and sprawling lawns.

The first yard was easy, all they had to do was push through a cluster of trees into the next one. Sam's sneaker got stuck in the mud, but Dean turned back, knelt, and grabbed Sam's ankle, pulling it free with a squelching sound.

At the second yard, Dean walked purposefully up to the wooden fence, while Sam stopped.

"What?" Dean turned back.

"We can't get over that." The fence loomed tall, way taller than Sammy, and even taller than Dean, wood slats stained red.

Dean snorted. "Sure we can, you idiot."

Scratching at a mosquito bite on his arm, Sam walked closer to the fence. "I dunno."

"You're such a wuss. How are we even related?" Dean threw his towel over the fence, spit on his hands, and said, "Watch me."

He reached up to grip the top of two slats, gave a small hop, and got the soles of his sneakers against the wood. The muscles in Dean's thin arms strained as he pulled himself up, then dropped down the other side.

"See? No biggie," he heard Dean's voice.

Sam glanced over at the big house that rose far across the lawn. No one seemed to be at home. A sprinkler arched a spray of water over the grass. It was hot, and Sam wanted to run through it. He wanted to go to a swimming hole more.

"Sam, before I'm thirty!"

Going to the fence, Sam stared up at the top of the slats. He spit on his hands the way Dean had and reached for the wood. He was barely tall enough to touch the pointed tops of the boards, not tall enough to get a really good grip.

"Dean?" There was no answer. Sam drew in a deep breath. "Dean!"

"I'm right here, waitin'."

"I can't." Sam lowered his hands, gripping the towel draped around his neck, the way Dean had gripped his. "I can't get over it."

He heard a slow, aggravated sigh from the other side of the fence. Then Dean's hands appeared, gripping the slats, then Dean's head and torso. He climbed over and dropped to the grass next to Sam.

"Dude, you're too short," Dean said. He knelt and laced his fingers together.

Sam put his left sneaker onto the step Dean had made with his hands, while Dean pushed him up far enough that he could really grab hold of the top of the slats.

"On three," Dean said. "One..."

"Two," said Sam, and then they said "Three" together, Dean gave him a push, and Sam pulled himself up.

He climbed over and jumped down the other side. Sam stumbled and fell to his knees in the grass, but it didn't hurt.

Dean dropped next to him a moment later and pulled him to his feet.

"We gotta work on your fence-climbing skills," Dean said.

* * *

There was a snap-hiss as Dean opened a bottle of Coke from the cooler.

"Okay," Dean said, settling back in the folding canvas chair. He held up a stopwatch. "Show me what you've got."

Sam wiped the top of his sleeve across his forehead, sun beating down hot. Of course Dean was comfortable, sitting there drinking cold soda and not letting Sam rest yet.

The chain-link fence was taller than any fence Sam had ever seen. He could get over a picket fence or a split-rail fence almost faster than Dean. Privacy fences were a little more of a challenge. Chain-link fences were easy since they had toe and hand-holds, but he'd never climbed over one this high before. Beyond the fence, a warm wind stirred the high, dry grass of the field, some developer's private property with nothing in it right now but scrub and a few trees.

"Move it, shrimp," Dean said.

"Who do you think you are, Dad? Should I start calling you _sir_?"

Dean only gave him a look. Sam stuck out his tongue.

"Wiseass," said Dean.

"Asshole," said Sam.

Well, fine. He'd wipe that smug expression off Dean's face, and beat his own record and Dean's. Sam ran at the fence and leapt, fingers and the toes of his sneakers easily gripping into the links. He climbed, eased himself over, and climbed down only a few feet before he made the jump.

The landing jolted through his body, but he didn't fall.

He turned to look at Dean through the fence. Dean stared at the stopwatch, then glanced up at Sam. "Not bad. That was faster than you did the smaller fence last week."

Raising his arms in the air, Sam splayed his fingers in a "V" for victory.

"Now come back," Dean said. He took a few long swallows of Coke, the bottle dripping with condensation, but as Sam started back towards the fence, Dean held up a hand. "And do it faster than you just climbed over it or you don't get any soda yet."

Sam flipped up his middle finger.

"Oooh, so profane for one so young. Don't let Dad see you doing that."

Dean kept on drinking his bottle of Coke like he was doing it _at_ Sam, and Sam could tell he was, because Dean watched Sam as he drank. Sam was too hot and sweaty and screw it, he could be just as good as Dean at climbing fences.

He ran at the fence, leapt higher than he had the first time, and climbed as fast as he could. The exposed ends of the top row of links scraped his calf a little as he went over the top. Sam jumped down as soon as he dared, landed hard, his ankle giving way. He put his hands out to break his fall, and landed on his side, wind knocked out of him.

"Shit," he heard Dean say, and then his shadow fell over Sam. "Sam?" Dean knelt beside him, hand flat against his back. "You okay? Sammy?"

Sam coughed and sat up. That had to have been a really fast climb, but Dean seemed to have forgotten all about the stopwatch. Sam rubbed at his ankle, wincing, and Dean's fingers impatiently shoved Sam's aside before he prodded gently at Sam's ankle, rotated it, as careful as any of the doctors Sam had ever been to or seen on tv.

"Can you walk on it?" Dean grabbed Sam under his armpits and pulled him to his feet.

"Yeah, I think so." Sam took a step. It didn't hurt too much, although the scrape on his calf stung.

"Here." Dean reached into the cooler and got a piece of ice. "Put this on that cut." Then he handed Sam a cold bottle of soda.

* * *

"Crap," Dean said. "Crap, crap, crap on a crap cracker."

"What? Dean? What is it?" Sam crouched next to his brother, who was currently on his belly beneath the post and rail fence.

"I'm stuck. Man, I hate barbed wire." He wriggled back an inch or two, then winced. Dean wore an olive canvas jacket and jeans, but the wire had snagged on the white t-shirt he had on under his jacket, and into the denim at Dean's thigh. "Can't go over it -- " Dean wriggled forward and stopped again. "Can't go through it."

"What do we do?" Sam hugged his arms to himself. It was getting colder, the sun dipping low and red beyond the fields.

"Go back to the car, get the wirecutters." Dean gingerly reached into the pocket of his jacket, pulled out the keys, and tossed them to Sam.

"But it's half an hour -- "

"I'll be fine. Go now. The longer you wait, the longer I have to lay on my stomach in the cold with that _thing_ still prowling around." Sam swallowed hard, and Dean must've seen it because Dean laughed. "Sam. I've got a shotgun." He grabbed it where it lay on the grass near him. "I can move enough to use it."

"Maybe we --"

"No," Dean said sharply. "Who are we going to call anyway? Dad's two states away, and he sent me -- he sent _us_ \-- to take this thing out and I'm not giving up because I was dumb enough to get myself caught on barbed wire. Take the sawed-off from the duffel, go, _now_. And if you see that thing, you shoot it."

Sam's lungs were burning by the time he reached the Impala, the sawed-off shotgun a heavy weight in his hands. He'd only fired a gun in target practice -- the idea that he'd actually have to shoot the creature made his mouth go dry.

Without stopping to rest, he got the trunk open, found the wirecutters, slammed the trunk shut, and started to run back. The sun was amost gone, but the fields were open, giving him some light from the early stars and the afterglow of the sunset.

As Sam got closer to where he'd left Dean, he heard something, carrying across the field, and realized it was Dean singing to himself and making sounds that Sam guessed were supposed to be drums and electric guitar. It took him a few seconds, and he was breathing too hard to hear it well, but he finally recognized the song as "Killing Time" by Metallica. Sam started to sing too as he ran -- he knew most of the words, Dean had played that song enough times. _Ingenuity needed to keep us alive/No time for cowardice, kill and survive._ The wirecutters and the gun grew heavier and heavier.

He dropped to his knees next to Dean, who stopped singing instantly.

" _Finally_ ," Dean said. "What, did you stop for a slurpee?"

A few years ago Sam might've argued with him but he got what the sharpness in Dean's voice meant now. He went to work cutting the wire without saying a word, couldn't talk anyway because he was out of breath.

The creature they were hunting, or maybe it was only an ordinary coyote, howled far off and Sam shivered as he cut the last piece of wire pinning his brother in place. Sometimes he really hated all of this, what they did. But a person had died, a farmer found dead in his own fields, blood drained from his body, with animal tracks in the mud all around him, and Sam knew there was only one answer.

Sam cut the last bit of wire digging into Dean's clothes.

"Little tip, Sam?" Dean said, as he wriggled out from under the fence. "When it comes to barbed wire, don't bother trying to go over or under, just cut the sucker."

* * *

The gate clicked as it closed behind Sam, as his breath turned visible, a thin cloud rising in the air that had been warm a second ago.

"Dean?" Gripping the can of salt, he turned in a circle, scanning the dark overgrown tangle of the grounds of the old Sackville place, shadowy with moonlight.

"Sam?" He heard Dean shout from the other side of the privacy fence.

The boards were covered in vines. Old Man Sackville, in life, had been big on fences and keeping the world out -- the fence towered over Sam.

"Right here," Sam yelled back.

"What the hell is going on?"

"I think Old Man Sackville wants us to leave."

"Then why did he lock the gate?" The fence shook as Dean kicked at the wood, dislodging some dead leaves.

"He's messing with our heads?" Sam ventured.

"The nasty old son of a bitch."

"Pretty much, yeah." The cold grew more intense around Sam. "Hey Dean, is it cold over there?"

"No."

"Okay, Sackville's just over here with me then. Good to know." Sam gripped the salt tighter, and thought about how he could put this on his college application. _Hobbies: investigating the paranormal; target practice; adrenaline addiction._ Yeah, that would look good.

"Sam, get over here."

"Working on that." The cold was growing more intense, and now a figure was materializing a few feet away, a broad-shouldered man with thick silvery hair wearing a dark suit.

As the figure reached for him, Sam flung a fistful of salt, shouting the Latin incantation he'd memorized. The ghost of Richard Sackville wavered and vanished.

"Sam?" The fence shook again.

"Yeah. I bought us a moment or two." Sam considered his options. Back into the house -- no way in hell. Run deeper into the Sackville property, well, the fence went all the way around the grounds, and there were fences in between he'd have to scale first. Sackville had been one paranoid bastard.

Sam went to the fence, and tried to climb using the vines. But their roots snapped under his weight, and he slid back down.

"Shit," said Sam.

"How's it going, there?" Dean called, his voice mockingly bright.

"Oh, great!"

"I'll climb over to you."

"And then we're both trapped? No." Sam moved to a thicker patch of vines and tried again, with the same result. "Damn."

"Sam, listen. Those vines aren't going to hold. You have to do this one differently. Like what I told you about privacy fences."

The temperature in the yard dropped, a wind rustling through the massive oak tree. A chill swept over Sam's arms, up his back.

"I think he's coming back."

The fence twitched -- Sam wondered if Dean had punched it. "Give yourself enough room, run at it, and jump," Dean ordered. "You gotta get high enough you can grab the top. Then pull yourself over. Once you've got a grip holding most of your weight, then you can use the vines for footholds."

The wind grew stronger, the cold numbing Sam's fingers. He couldn't see Old Man Sackville yet.

"Sammy?" Dean called to him.

Sam backed up a few yards, ran at the fence, and leapt. He didn't make it high enough, and slid back down. Glancing over his shoulder, Sam watched as the ghost materialized again, face twisted with anger. He heard Dean shouting his name.

Shit, shit, shit -- Sam ran at the fence again, leapt, and this time his hand found a round post cap and the top edge of the slats. He gripped hard, legs dangling, and then scrambled with his sneakers to get a foothold. The cold was relentless at his back, like the ghost was trying to pull him down.

Sam was deeply screwed.

With all his strength, he pulled himself up and inched his body across the top of the fence. As he swung his legs over the other side, a hand gripped his left ankle and Sam shut his eyes for a second with relief. Dean's other hand cupped the sole of his sneaker, guiding Sam down.

"Nice work, brainiac," Dean said, as Sam landed next to him.

Dean's hands hovered over Sam's shoulders, like he wanted to poke and prod to make sure he was okay, and was trying not to.

Maybe Sam should say _I'm fine_ or something like that, but it seemed redundant. He clenched his fists inside the sleeves of his jacket to hide their shaking -- maybe he should be over getting that rattled because a ghost.

He wondered if _fence climbing_ could legitimately be listed as a sport.

* * *

A scream sounded from behind the house.

Sam shoved his lockpicking tools into his pocket, matching pace with Dean as they leapt down the porch steps and ran for the alley. For a moment, it was like Sam had never left, had never stopped doing this with his brother.

A high wooden gate between that house and the next gave access to the yard, but when Dean went to open it, it was locked. Together, they took a few steps back, then ran at the gate. Sam's hands grabbed the top of the slats at the same time as Dean's, the boards shaking under the soles of their boots. They landed at the same moment on the other side.

~end


End file.
